Do we need social Science in Kenya?
It
may finally happen. After years of debates about the contribution of
social science and humanities, to the understanding of the human
condition, we may finally see the likes of history, linguistics,
sociology, geography anthropology and philosophy either deliberately
underfunded into extinction or actually banished from our education
syllabus. The reason, as Kenya's Deputy President William Ruto recently
put it eloquently, these are not the kind of disciplines required by our
growing (or is it stagnant-albeit declining?) economy. Curiously,
economics and law were spared the onslaught, probably because graduates
of these disciplines do not roast maize on the roadsides like
anthropologists and historians. This is not new talk. These debates have
always been around us as long as universities have existed. What is
telling is that much more advanced economies such as North America and
Western Europe have been there and done that. What have the debates
achieved? The jury is still out there. One of the most poignant one was
the failed attempt by US senators Tom Coburn and Jeff Flake to de-fund
Political Science from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) budget.
To buttress the position, the Leader of the US House of Representatives, Eric Cantor, pointed out, “funds currently spent by the government on social science – including on politics of all things – would be better spent helping find cures to diseases!". A very powerful message indeed! But it failed to impress Congress. Because, I think the US Congress has individuals among its ranks with far more impressive academic and policy credentials as to be hoodwinked easily by rhetoric in matters that fundamentally affect strategic interests of the US.
The question that begs is, are humanities useless for our “growing economy” (which, incidentally, has been nascent for more than half a century)? An economy, which has defied Rostow and Darwin put together? Is this economy practically stunted because most of the graduates are social scientists, whose knowledge does not promote the economic interests of Kenya? That was the nuanced implication in the DP’s statement. But can we blame the DP for his thinking? I highly doubt. For one, I hope none of the DP’s advisors are from such backgrounds because if their knowledge is from the pedestrian humanities, they cannot add value to the kind of country he foresees in the near and distant future, a country he aspires to govern. But what kind of country can develop without social sciences and humanities. Who measures development? Who provides indicators for development? Who finds fault with one development indicator and replaces it with another? In which disciplines is development robustly discussed? In whose language, discipline-wise, are policy guidelines formulated? Answers to these questions could provide us with reliable positional arguments on whether our country should do away with sociology, literature, anthropology, history, geography, linguistics and philosophy.
For the academy, the posturing by policy makers about the uselessness of humanities is hollow and devoid of any new evidence. It is actually buck-passing. We are afraid to lay the blame for our high unemployment rates squarely where it belongs. But that is another long discussion. Part of the background to this anti-social science crusade stems from ignorant disciplinary arrogance, more so by individuals who themselves do not enjoy guru status in those disciplines. Otherwise, give it to highly accomplished natural scientists, they do not engage in such debates. For sure, Nobel Prize material medics, physicists, chemists, biologists inter-alia know better than their fledgling acolytes to denigrate any branch of knowledge. And we have many in our local universities. These highly rated scientists are aware that their accomplishments are products of a broad spectrum of epistemology. After all, was it not a natural scientist who discovered that the World is not flat? So, why are the so-called policy makers trying to take us back to the Pre-Galileo world where there is just one answer to all the problems affecting humanity? For me, this crusade amounts to what one cheeky anthropologist referred to as intellectual vandalism.
We must acknowledge that there are fundamental differences between natural sciences and social sciences. However, those differences do not amount to some scale of ranking in any way (including job marketability). Part of the reason is that the social sciences are not a homogenous block. The fields of inquiry range from those such as geography, psychology and anthropology that are somewhat integrated with the natural sciences through to those that draw more on the humanities such as literature, linguistics and history. This diversity is what makes social science a very rich body of knowledge for solutions to human problems. It is, therefore, undeniable that both sides of knowledge provide the kind of robust theory and evidence that enrich each other. Both sides are riven with the same uncertainties about the source and authority of knowledge. If we want to understand the nature of our population problems, we must seek answers from both sides of the scientific divide. The same with infrastructure, epidemics, natural resources management, garbage collection, crime etc.
What our euphoric leaders do not appreciate is that social scientific scrutiny of the human, rather than natural, world doesn't easily lend itself to generalisable laws, cast-iron predictions, nor can it always preserve a distinction between fact and value. Social science provides careful, theoretically and methodologically rigorous exploration of these subjects, which are fundamental to a healthy society, though, finding unarguable evidence is extremely difficult. Social sciences articulate and frame public, academic and policy debates and encourage critical, nuanced thinking. If you look keenly, this could be the very reason we should have more and better funded social science rather than less. After all, since politicians are everyday creating social science related policy, often in hoc to sensational headlines, why should we not have a major scholarly engagement with the same themes so that our leaders hopefully end up formulating and implementing those policies a bit more effectively?
Clearly the end to this debate will come when physicists will have overcome the uncertainties of pursuing the Higgs Boson, or when breast cancer researchers finally succeed in developing new genetic therapies. The uncertainties natural scientist face are not significantly different from those of social scientists in trying to explain the far more unruly phenomena we call human behaviour. If we cannot accept this simple logic, then we can criticize anthropologists for not coming up with a panacea for the two most critical epidemics in this country; corruption and tribalism, which incidentally are responsible for the stunted economy and unsafe society we are saddled with since 1963.
To buttress the position, the Leader of the US House of Representatives, Eric Cantor, pointed out, “funds currently spent by the government on social science – including on politics of all things – would be better spent helping find cures to diseases!". A very powerful message indeed! But it failed to impress Congress. Because, I think the US Congress has individuals among its ranks with far more impressive academic and policy credentials as to be hoodwinked easily by rhetoric in matters that fundamentally affect strategic interests of the US.
The question that begs is, are humanities useless for our “growing economy” (which, incidentally, has been nascent for more than half a century)? An economy, which has defied Rostow and Darwin put together? Is this economy practically stunted because most of the graduates are social scientists, whose knowledge does not promote the economic interests of Kenya? That was the nuanced implication in the DP’s statement. But can we blame the DP for his thinking? I highly doubt. For one, I hope none of the DP’s advisors are from such backgrounds because if their knowledge is from the pedestrian humanities, they cannot add value to the kind of country he foresees in the near and distant future, a country he aspires to govern. But what kind of country can develop without social sciences and humanities. Who measures development? Who provides indicators for development? Who finds fault with one development indicator and replaces it with another? In which disciplines is development robustly discussed? In whose language, discipline-wise, are policy guidelines formulated? Answers to these questions could provide us with reliable positional arguments on whether our country should do away with sociology, literature, anthropology, history, geography, linguistics and philosophy.
For the academy, the posturing by policy makers about the uselessness of humanities is hollow and devoid of any new evidence. It is actually buck-passing. We are afraid to lay the blame for our high unemployment rates squarely where it belongs. But that is another long discussion. Part of the background to this anti-social science crusade stems from ignorant disciplinary arrogance, more so by individuals who themselves do not enjoy guru status in those disciplines. Otherwise, give it to highly accomplished natural scientists, they do not engage in such debates. For sure, Nobel Prize material medics, physicists, chemists, biologists inter-alia know better than their fledgling acolytes to denigrate any branch of knowledge. And we have many in our local universities. These highly rated scientists are aware that their accomplishments are products of a broad spectrum of epistemology. After all, was it not a natural scientist who discovered that the World is not flat? So, why are the so-called policy makers trying to take us back to the Pre-Galileo world where there is just one answer to all the problems affecting humanity? For me, this crusade amounts to what one cheeky anthropologist referred to as intellectual vandalism.
We must acknowledge that there are fundamental differences between natural sciences and social sciences. However, those differences do not amount to some scale of ranking in any way (including job marketability). Part of the reason is that the social sciences are not a homogenous block. The fields of inquiry range from those such as geography, psychology and anthropology that are somewhat integrated with the natural sciences through to those that draw more on the humanities such as literature, linguistics and history. This diversity is what makes social science a very rich body of knowledge for solutions to human problems. It is, therefore, undeniable that both sides of knowledge provide the kind of robust theory and evidence that enrich each other. Both sides are riven with the same uncertainties about the source and authority of knowledge. If we want to understand the nature of our population problems, we must seek answers from both sides of the scientific divide. The same with infrastructure, epidemics, natural resources management, garbage collection, crime etc.
What our euphoric leaders do not appreciate is that social scientific scrutiny of the human, rather than natural, world doesn't easily lend itself to generalisable laws, cast-iron predictions, nor can it always preserve a distinction between fact and value. Social science provides careful, theoretically and methodologically rigorous exploration of these subjects, which are fundamental to a healthy society, though, finding unarguable evidence is extremely difficult. Social sciences articulate and frame public, academic and policy debates and encourage critical, nuanced thinking. If you look keenly, this could be the very reason we should have more and better funded social science rather than less. After all, since politicians are everyday creating social science related policy, often in hoc to sensational headlines, why should we not have a major scholarly engagement with the same themes so that our leaders hopefully end up formulating and implementing those policies a bit more effectively?
Clearly the end to this debate will come when physicists will have overcome the uncertainties of pursuing the Higgs Boson, or when breast cancer researchers finally succeed in developing new genetic therapies. The uncertainties natural scientist face are not significantly different from those of social scientists in trying to explain the far more unruly phenomena we call human behaviour. If we cannot accept this simple logic, then we can criticize anthropologists for not coming up with a panacea for the two most critical epidemics in this country; corruption and tribalism, which incidentally are responsible for the stunted economy and unsafe society we are saddled with since 1963.
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